TV shows have taught us how to recognize a serial killer. Serial killers have pale skin, wild hair, and hollow-looking eyes. They grin when they recount their crimes. The reality, of course, is different. Serial killers are so successful - serial, rather than mere killers - because they look too normal to be recognized. They sit next to you on the bus or stand behind the McDonald's counter. Or they sit in the front row of your class.
Kaleb too was pale, but his hair was neatly trimmed and his eyes puffy and red. While describing his crimes the 16 year old on the white plastic chair cried and chewed his nails.
He told me he had been bullied, for being overweight, for being good with computers, for being awkward around girls. Kaleb had always been different, or at least he had always felt different. And the others had treated him accordingly.
The worst one, Kaleb said, was a girl called Zoe. She was pretty and smart and teachers as well as students liked her. Everybody liked her, even Kaleb, only that he liked her too much for his own good.
"I asked her on a date", Kaleb said. "But she didn't even answer. She only laughed."
Zoe herself did not tease Kaleb. But she told her friends. And Zoe's friends told her friends. And within two days Kaleb had turned from a person that was mostly ignored, a nobody, to what he felt was an "anti-body": Everybody turned, everybody laughed.
"I had fantasized about her before," Kaleb said, shifting nervously in his chair. "But that was mostly, well, sexual."
"But when this kept going, for weeks, these fantasies turned more violent. I wanted to punish her for what she did to me. I wanted to punish her for the many laughing faces by destroying her laugh. I imagined punching her or cutting her face off."
I nodded.
"And after a few weeks I began to dream about it. I woke up every night with these vivid scenes in my head - how I would scalp her or gauge her eyes out. Every night the scenes got more intense, more vivid, I woke up sweating and with my muscles aching."
On a Saturday morning, just at a time when the leaves had begun to turn yellow and orange, they found Zoe's body. She had been at a party, left late and drunk. Somehow she got under a bridge, and somehow a stone had hammered her face and skulls into mash.
"I only heard of it on Monday," Kaleb said. "And right away I remembered the dream; how I waited for her; how I chased her; how she screamed; how I pushed her down the bridge; and how I grabbed the sharp stone and drilled it into her eye socket. I had only vague memories of smashing something, in my dream it had seemed more like a piece of meat than a human head."
"Did no one suspect you?"
"No. At least I don't think so. After a week I heard two guys joking that it must have been me. But I don't think they believed that. Nobody took me serious; they all thought I would be too scared. Even I thought I would have been too scared; I took the vivid dreams as a coincidence. I mean, I only fantasized and dreamed of killing her, I never actually wanted to do it."
For the next six months Kaleb had only occasional, violent nightmares. But his fantasies stopped, and so did his vivid dreams of murder. But by early February the bullying began anew.
A boy named Christopher caught Kaleb looking for too long at Kimmie, Christopher's girlfriend. First he started a fight, but when Kaleb ran off he rallied his friends against Kaleb. They caught Kaleb after school, on his way home. Christopher and Kimmie and four others beat him, made Kaleb crawl on the floor and beg for forgiveness. They made Kaleb roll on the floor and bark like a dog; and they filmed all of it.
That night Kaleb's dreams returned.
"I went home and it wasn't even 5pm, but I cried under my blanket for hours, until I fell asleep. And then I dreamt how I would hack Christopher's arms off and make Kimmie watch. And the next day, when the video started to spread and they were all taunting me and bark at me, the dreams got more intense."
Kaleb suffered for four weeks. The taunts and insults got worse day by day.
"Every day I came home and went straight to my room to play games. It was the only thing that kept me sane; it was the only way to keep the fantasies out of my head. In my mind I killed them many times. These images, how Christopher and Kimmie were laughing and ordering me to go down on my knees, just didn't leave me alone."
Christopher's body was found in his own car. A bullet was in his head and a large knife wound in his abdomen. Kimmie's body was not found until months later, until after Kaleb was captured and until he described how he had dreamed her death; how he had caught her near the lake, bound her legs and arms, cut off her ears, and watched how the stones in her jeans slowly pulled her underwater.
"I mean, when I heard about her death I was freaked out. But I didn't believe it could have been me. It was all just a dream. I knew it was a dream and nothing more, because I didn't have a gun and I definitely wasn't able to run faster than her. And I enjoyed it in my dreams, how she screamed and begged for forgiveness, but I only enjoyed it because I knew, I was absolutely sure that it was a dream. I would never have done such a thing while awake."
After their deaths the school sank in silence. Classes were cancelled for a week and afterwards the bullying had stopped. There were rumors that Kaleb had been seen near the forest where Christopher's car was found. But as Kimmie had disappeared the police concluded the murder was an accident and the real goal an abduction; the sheriff went so far as to announce to the press that Kimmie had "likely been sold as a prostitute".
In the summer Kaleb failed his French class.
"I was actually scared when I began to fantasize about killing Mrs. Evans. I still didn't believe that it was me, that it could have been me that killed the others, but it just all seemed too strange. It was as if whenever I hated someone that person suddenly ended up dead. And I hated Mrs. Evans, but I still didn't want her to die. I didn't want anyone to die!"
"I spent every waking minute in games and books, but at night I couldn't control it. I kept dreaming of her, how I would stick a knife through her throat and force her to say 'Merci' and 'Tres Bien'. I felt guilty for dreaming all that, but it felt incredibly. Those dreams were like mini orgasms, as if the universe at night was suddenly just and fair."
On the 6th of August, at 8:30am the police got the emergency call from Mr. Evans. He had heard screams and, when he ran downstairs, saw his wife on the floor near the front door. Kaleb was crouching above her, stabbing a knife again and again into her throat and chest. Mr. Evans kicked the knife out of Kaleb's hands. Kaleb had jumped forward, but Mr. Evans punched Kaleb's head.
Kaleb fell backwards on the ground and was knocked unconscious. He woke up, in handcuffs in the back of the police car.
"I still don't understand", Kaleb said. "I went to bed, and then I woke up with this horrible pain and two police officers pushing me to the ground."
"This whole thing - I thought it was a dream. I thought it was like all those vivid dreams before."
